Redefining Chronic Illness Dr. Aaron Hartman On Functional Medicine & Root-Cause Healing

Summary

The Good Question Podcast
Host: Richard Jacobs
Episode: Redefining Chronic Illness — Dr. Aaron Hartman On Functional Medicine & Root-Cause Healing
Guest: Dr. Aaron Hartman, MD (Functional Medicine Physician, Author: Incurable: From Hopeless Diagnosis to Defying All Odds)
Date: July 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dr. Aaron Hartman shares his journey from conventional academic medicine to becoming a pioneer in functional and integrative medicine. He discusses the failures he observed in the traditional medical system, especially regarding chronic illnesses, and how personal experiences—particularly with the adoption and care of his daughter, Anna—sparked a radical reevaluation of the system’s approach to diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Hartman unpacks the core principles of functional medicine, recounts powerful patient stories, and offers critical insights into emerging therapies and the future of root-cause healing.

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Dr. Hartman’s Personal Story: The Turning Point

Anna’s Adoption & Medical Struggles

• Dr. Hartman’s daughter Anna, born to a mother addicted to methamphetamine, came into his family with profound health challenges including cerebral palsy and blindness ([01:04]).
• The initial medical response: pressured for invasive procedures (e.g., feeding tube) and reported to Child Protective Services for refusing standard recommendations ([01:04]–[03:21]).
• Quote:
  “Our first interaction actually was with the healthcare system itself...But my wife, being an occupational therapist...was like, look, we want...she's not ever supposed to talk. But our expectation is, and she will.” — Dr. Hartman ([01:20])
• Realization: Specialists often lack understanding of unique cases; parents driven by love—and desperation—sometimes must challenge “the system.”
• Today: Anna, now 20, has had zero surgeries (vs. the average 13 for cerebral palsy patients by that age), is thriving, moving out, and living independently ([03:21]).

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Pushing Back Against the System

• Family generally supportive once Anna was adopted; most resistance came from the medical and legal systems ([04:38]).
• Main lesson: True advocacy often means challenging authority and seeking alternative answers.
• Quote:
  “The biggest kickback was from the medical system and the legal system, to be honest with you.” — Dr. Hartman ([05:25])
• “The system got in the way. We just went around it. And my wife is really good at getting around the system.” ([06:04])

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Transition to Functional Medicine

• Initial exposure through personal research and conferences (American Board of Holistic Integrated Medicine, Institute for Functional Medicine) ([06:43]).
• Clinical experimentation: Treated early chronic cases with alternative approaches (e.g., yeast overgrowth with antifungals) ([07:52]).
• Practice evolution: Launched Richmond Functional Medicine; now largely functional/integrative in focus ([08:36]).
• Quote:
  “I like to learn from the source. I like to go to the smartest people and learn from them.” ([06:43])

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Understanding Functional vs. Conventional Medicine

Key Differences ([08:48]):

• Conventional Medicine: Excels at acute, emergency interventions (heart attack, trauma, surgeries, etc.).
• Functional Medicine: Excels at the “space between specialists”—chronic, complex, multi-factorial illnesses developing over years or decades.
• Quote:
  “Functional medicine is like the space between specialists...our current healthcare system is amazing at acute care stuff...but we're really horrible at chronic care.” ([08:48])
• Chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s) are metabolic, decades-long processes—functional medicine targets root causes.

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Case Stories and Patient Experiences

Why Patients Seek Functional Medicine ([11:14]):

• Often desperate, told by specialists “nothing’s wrong” or “it’s all in your head.”
• Functional approach uncovers overlooked factors: nutrient deficiencies, environmental toxins, infections, etc.

Chronicity and Recovery ([12:13]):

• Duration of sickness doesn't always predict the recovery time; root-cause complexity matters more.
• Quote:
  “It's really the complexity...not in how long you've been sick...it's in what really has caused this to go on over decades.” ([12:13])

Diagnostic “Aha” Moments ([14:32]):

• Patients resonate when root causes from their distant past are uncovered (e.g., toxic exposures, concussions).
• Intake process is extensive (2 hours) to reconstruct whole-person medical narratives.

Limitations and Successes ([15:41]):

• Quote:
  “Everybody will respond to a certain degree…it depends on when you catch the person, your age, your body's ability to self-heal and self-repair…” ([15:41])
• Success isn’t always a “cure”—sometimes it’s stability and improved quality of life in severe chronic disease.

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Emerging Therapies and Evolving Tools

What’s New or Rediscovered ([17:05]):

• Many “new” tools are older therapies with revived application—lipid therapy, bile acids, butyrate, neural therapy ([17:05]).
• Neural therapy: resets fascia and nervous system; origins in 1925 Germany ([17:05]–[19:36]).
• Peptides & stem cell therapies for tissue repair and chronic injury, with ongoing FDA scrutiny ([19:45]).
  • “The Wolverine” peptide stack for enhanced healing ([20:12]).

Clinical Practice vs. Research ([21:52]):

• True efficacy is learned in the trenches through clinical experience, not just in research articles.
• Quote:
  “That’s the thing about being a practitioner...seeing how it actually works in hundreds of people.” ([22:52])

Dismissal of Anecdotal Evidence ([23:27]):

• Conventional system often dismisses “anecdotes”; functional practitioners value patterns and outlier cases as sources of discovery.
• Quote:
  “When experts use the word anecdote, that's a way of blowing off something they don't understand.” ([23:27])

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Technology, Data, and the Future

AI in Functional Practice ([25:26]):

• Dr. Hartman uses AI but considers it an “idiot savant”—a tool, not a replacement for clinical judgment ([25:44]).

Future Trends & Systemic Barriers ([27:04]):

• Two diverging healthcare pathways: insurance/academia vs. patient-driven, out-of-pocket access ([27:04]).
• Widening disparities in access to functional medicine: “People with money are getting more access and people without are stuck on the government system.” ([27:52])

Barriers to Integrative Practice ([29:11]):

• Functional medicine requires longer appointments (2-hour intakes)—not feasible under insurance models privileging 10-minute visits ([29:11]).
• Economic model and physician debt make integration challenging.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “If you have a daughter, a son, you love that little kid so much. You pretty much do whatever. You're willing to almost lay your life down for them to get them whatever they need. And that's what we did.” — Dr. Hartman ([06:04])
• “We have these two pathways that are going...and you know, how are they going to end up? I don't know.” ([27:54])
• “My piece, I think, is educating parents, patients, and then taking care of my patients as best I can and navigating the system.” ([30:18])
• “You have to listen to people, you have to—their stories are real, they know their bodies better than any, any expert does.” ([24:52])

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Key Takeaways

• Root-Cause Focus: Functional medicine looks for underlying contributors to chronic illness, often missed in conventional specialty care.
• Individualized, Whole-Person Approach: Dr. Hartman’s work highlights the value of long intake sessions and reconstructing health narratives.
• Clinical Humility: Listening, ongoing learning, and openness to “anecdotes” are crucial to effective healing in complex cases.
• Barriers Remain: Insurance and access hurdles mean that functional medicine is still not universally accessible—a challenge for the future.

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Resources & Connect

• Dr. Aaron Hartman’s Central Hub: AaronHartmanMD.com — links to his clinic, podcast, YouTube, and his book Incurable ([30:52]).
• Book: Incurable: From Hopeless Diagnosis to Defying All Odds

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For more information, visit Dr. Hartman’s website or explore his resources for parents, patients, and practitioners interested in moving beyond the limits of the conventional medical model.

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to the Good Question podcast with Richard Jacobs. Our goal is to make each of our guests exclaim, hmm, that's a good question. I don't know the answer. Because when that happens, it means you, the listener, may be inspired to learn more beyond the interview and to ask great questions yourself that lead to new insights. In this podcast, we cover historical and current anthropology, comparative religion and history. Welcome. And let's get started.

[B]

Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Good Question podcast. My guest today is Aaron Hartman, M.D. he's a functional medicine specialist. He's also an author. The book's called Uncurable From Hopeless Diagnosis to Defying All Odds. His website is Richmond Functional Medicine Dot com. So welcome, Aaron.

[C]

It's great to be here. I'm excited to share some my story and some insights.

[B]

Let's start out with a little bit about your background. Did it lead to you writing your book? Did you have some kind of like, illness you thought you'd never recover from?

[C]

My background, I started out as a typical academic style physician. I was in the military after finishing my med, medical education and coming to the end of my military service and, you know, police commander, meritory service award, kind of all that kind of stuff. And, and met my daughter Anna. She was actually one of my wife's patients. She was, her foster home was closing. My wife asked me if we'd be willing to bring her into her house to be her foster parents, maybe even adopter. So I said yes to that, not knowing where that would lead. Brought her to her home and we had. Our first interaction actually was with the healthcare system itself. She had a lot of health issues. Her birth mother did crystal meth throughout the entire pregnancy. She had a stroke before she was born. She was born blind. Just a lot of, a lot of hurdles to overcome, but those were actually manageable in many ways. It was the system that didn't want us to actually adopt her and didn't want us to go through this whole thing. And part of that story is that a routine follow up. We've been feeding her, doing all the right stuff. She appeared to be doing well. Well. But the GI doctor was like, nope, not good enough. She needs to gain some weight. She needs more fat on her. So the next thing you do is put a feeding tube in so you can pour formula into the stomach of this child and put some meat on the bones. But my wife being an occupational therapist for kids with special needs, she was like, look, we want, you know, she's not ever supposed to talk. But our expectation Issue is, and she will. And part of talking is chewing and swallowing. Chewing and swallowing is a huge part of developing the motor skills to talk. So we said, you know, we just don't want to put this feeding tube in. It's going to affect your ability to essentially talk, crawl. I mean, it's hard to crawl when you have a tube in your belly. I know she's never supposed to walk, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And we said no. And the result of the healthcare system is we got reported to child protective services for medical neglect, for refusing to do the doctor's recommendations, got investigated. Now it's my first kind of like aha moment where it's like the healthcare system doesn't like it when you give them pushback. But the real inflection point was six months later when my wife found her growth charts with kids with my daughter's exact diagnosis, which is cerebral palsy. On that growth chart, she was normal, she was in the middle. So all of a sudden it was like the specialist has no idea. The special. Comparing my daughter with every other quote unquote normal child in the country, not recognizing her special needs, her situation, and getting ready to commit her to a surgical procedure. And that was when I realized that I had to figure out everything for my daughter. I had to go into research. And that put a big, a large amount of skepticism in my mind for any recommendations that could potentially harm my daughter from then going forward.

[B]

If you would keep going with the story, what's happened with your daughter in the intervening number of years.

[C]

So, you know, typically my daughter, the typical child with cerebral palsy by the time or 20, and she's actually just turned 20, has had about 13 surgical procedures and as today, you know, she's not had a single surgical procedure. So. And we've literally refused to do every recommended surgery they've recommended to. We found other ways to work around spasticity, muscle weaknesses, eye problems, inability to talk, metabolic issues. We just have figured ways around all this using integrative, functional, alternative medicine type things. And so at 20, she's actually supposed to be moving out of the house in the next month, which is a little scary for my wife. And I'm moving to yeah, which it's about two hour drive from here. She's my first kid moving out of the house. She's thriving, she's enjoyable, People love hanging out with her, she's a joy to be around. It's been a crazy journey, but we've literally done nothing the specialist to recommend and she's thrived.

[B]

How did you decide to do that in the face of pressure? Family. And I'm sure everybody like it's like when, you know, I'm guessing, well I've had, but it wasn't, you know, terminal. But it's like having cancer. You know, the family wants to give you advice. If you don't go to the doctor, they get mad at you or I mean, who knows, you know, did you have people in the family, extended family that were pushing on you and criticizing, criticizing you or was it, you know, just the medical industry itself was doing it or what was happening?

[C]

For us it was basically, we had no other option, another choice. It was mainly out of desperation, you know, we're going to start doing surgical procedures to this little two year old girl that we didn't feel necessary. And so who's going to figure it out? The specialist didn't know. So all of a sudden there was a weight on me and as a medical doctor I had the tools and resources, I could figure stuff out and that's what I did. I would wake up at 4 o' clock in the morning, pull up research articles and the closest thing I could find to drug induced brain damage, which at that point in time was autism. As far as our family members, they, you family's family's interesting. You know, they initially weren't super excited about us adopting Anna, but once we adopted her, they fell in love with her and supported us. Her therapists, you know, pediatric therapists, whether the physical therapist, occupational therapists, one what's best for the kids and they're, and they're close, they have a closer association with the kids and the families than the specialists do. And so there's a lot of, you know, sometimes the therapists actually become like a buffer between specialists and the patients and their families just because, you know, the surgeon sees the kid twice a year and the therapist sees them every week. Like who knows a kid better, right? The, the, and so they kind of have this knowledge like we need to, you know, do what's best for the kid, the family, but also help form them. And so, and I don't know, my wife and I just. The biggest kickback was from the medical system and the legal system, to be honest with you, the state and how they respond to us. With her with, you know, her special needs and stipends to pay for stuff, the, that one GI doctor, you know, it was just really intriguing. So, and we just, my wife and I were kind of both stubborn and we just kind of put her head down, went forward and didn't really think or care about what stuff was happening. I mean, if you have a child, if you have a daughter, a son, you know, you love that, that, that little kid, that little kid much. You pretty much do whatever. You're willing to almost lay your life down for them to get them whatever they need. And that's what we did. And so it was more of a challenge. The system got in the way. We just went around it. And my wife is really good at getting around the system. So she did her thing, I did my thing and didn't really worry about other stuff.

[B]

Well, that's good. How many years ago was this where the battle began? So like 20 years ago or 18 years ago?

[C]

Yeah, about 18 years ago. Yeah, it's been spent a lot of time.

[B]

Wow. So you became a doctor at what point? And you know, I'm sure you changed your practice so you just began it in a different way because it was time allowing. But you know, how did that, how did you come to be a physician?

[C]

I went to medical school from 1996 to 2000 and then did medical school from 2000 to 2003, got married to my wife in 2004 and then met Anna in 2006. So I'd been a, like a physician for about six years and then a board certified physician for about two, and I may have a three, two, three when I'd met Anna. And you know, at first it was just me exploring things, me finding out things. But I like to learn from the source. I like to go to like the smartest people and find, learn from them. So eventually I heard about the aim, which is American, like the American Board of Holistic Integrated Medicine. They had a conference in St. Pete, Florida. I went to that and learned a lot of really cool stuff and that opened my eyes up. And then learned about the Institute for Functional Medicine and started studying there and then learned about functional neurology and started studying from functional neurology seminars. And just I would find these experts and just started studying from them and building up my knowledge base. And as I built it up, you know, probably 2412, 2012. Ish. I started experimenting with patients. You know, you start learning stuff about different ways around things. I remember one of the first patients I quote, unquote, experimented with because I'm still practicing, right? I've been doing this for 20, 26 years now. I'm still practicing, but I'd learned about this thing called yeast overgrowth syndrome that sounds a lot like chronic fatigue and fibro I had a patient who had typical other diagnosis of chronic fatigue and fibro, but she also had vaginal yeast issues, she had gut issues, she had a horrible diet, she smoked, she had thrush in her mouth. And so I'm like, I think you've got this yeast overgrowth thing. How about I give you some Diflucan, which is an antifungal, see what happen. She took a week of it, and her fibromyalgia went away for like, almost two months. And so I would just find patients that are willing to try different things and started, you know, trying things with them. And that just progressed from 2012 until 2016. My wife was like, hey, why don't you put up a shingle, start practice? I'm like, okay, I'll just throw up a shingle and see what happens. And so I built a website, put up a shingle, and a year later I was. Half my practice was functional medicine stuff. And it's just been gangbusters since then.

[B]

Well, I don't know, like with traditional medicine, I know it's hard to estimate, but what's your guess? What percentage of people just can't be helped by traditional medicine versus functional medicine? You know, just what have you observed?

[C]

I think we miscategorize traditional medicine and misunderstand functional medicine because we use these names and words, nomenclature, not quite understanding the nuances of it. Okay, that's. What does that mean? Our current healthcare system is amazing at acute care stuff. If you have a heart attack, you do not want to be anywhere else in the world. Like, I'm in Midlothian, Virginia. Our local community hospital can stench your heart open like in two hours. That. That is incredible. It's crazy. If you have a car accident, you have a brain bleed, you can get a burr hole in your head to release the pressure within, you know, two to three hours. Like, that's pretty crazy that we're that good at acute stuff, but we're really horrible at is chronic care. And I think that's where the lines get blurred. Functional medicine is like the space between specialists. So you need your good vascular surgeon, you need your good neurosurgeon, you need your good cardiologist that specializes in stents and stuff. But the thing about it is, is that's the acute situation. It takes you 30 to 40 years to get heart disease. Cancer is a metabolic disease. It takes decades for your metabolism to turn into cancer. You know, dementia, Alzheimer's, we're actually learning these things are actually metabolic diseases that start decades before the disease Pops up. That is where functional medicine shines. That's where it's powerful. And so when we say, you know, conventional versus, you know, functional, we really need to think as acute versus chronic. And acute care system. If you have a heart attack, you're in a car accident, don't come to me and ask me for some herbs, like go to the hospital, go to the er.

[B]

The subtle thing is the chronic turns, get too acute, and then we say, oh, oh, what are we going to do? You know, all right, I'm going to change.

[C]

You know, if you're diabetic and your A1C is 10, you probably need to start a medication. We'll start you on, you know, GLP1, some metformin, well, maybe even some insulin, depending here. But once your A1C gets stable in that 7ish range, we'll start doing your herbs, we'll start doing berberine, we'll start doing bergamot, we'll start using chromium and cinnamon to actually improve insulin resistance. Work on your gut. So each of these has its place and that it's a certain situation. As a medical doctor trained in both, I have the ability to figure out, okay, when is, when do you need to get surgery for your gallbladder and when do you need to just to treat the IBS with some other stuff. And so that's where, because I have three board certifications, it allows me to kind of straddle acute, chronic, you know, the integrative world and the conventional world as well. But it's confusing because a lot of people think like it's either or. It's not either or. These are complementary. They come together, they, they augment each other. It's not either or, it's both.

[B]

And so when people come to you, what's their. What's a typical story? You know, they tried allopathic medicine for a while and they're not getting results and they're getting desperate. You know, what makes people come to a functional person like you?

[C]

Typically, they come to us kind of sort of out of desperation. They've tried a bunch of things, been to a bunch of specialists and been told there's nothing wrong with you. We can't help you, it's all in your head. And so. But they know something's wrong, right? I have aches and pains, my hormones are off, and fertility issues and gut problems and brain fog. And, you know, I'm having word finding issues, I just don't feel good, I'm sleeping poorly, et cetera, et cetera. But all lab tests are normal. I know. And all the specialists say I'm fine. And they come to us, I'm like, oh, you have all these nutrient deficiencies, you have all these fatty acid lipid abnormalities. Oh, you live in a moldy building. You have a tick borne illness, you have Lyme disease. Oh, you have sirs. You know, we actually make the diagnoses that fit between these specialties and then. But the reason people come to us is because they've been told they can't be helped and they, they know something's wrong with them in their heart of hearts and they're not accepting the status quo.

[B]

Right. And you know, if someone's had a condition for a little while, does that typically mean it may resolve quickly? And if someone's had a condition for 10 or 20 years, does that mean it's going to have to take years to fix?

[C]

Not really, no. I mean, I, you know, I have a patient I'm working with right now who had chronic fatigue from the age in fiber from the age of 30 till about 70. And when I diagnosed her lab disease, yeah, when I diagnosed her lab disease, within six months, most of her symptoms were gone. You know, she turned around really pretty quickly. Now, she did everything we talked about. She cleaned her diet up her grand a box like she did. She was very compliant. I have other patients with minimal symptoms that take longer because they're more convoluted. It's like not just Lyme or not just mold, but it's like five things. It's a concussion you had 20 years ago. It's your hormones are off. It's you had a toxic exposure from a factory worked in. You know, it's really the, the, the complexity is not in like how long you've been sick. It's in what really has caused this to go on over decades. And then unraveling that, you know, with my wife, I, I give example in my book, for example, I talk about her. I think we're like married for 15 years before I had the aha moment with her that a lot of her healthcare issues started in grad school. She's a, again an occupational therapist and she, he did the same anatomy lab that I did in medical school. And I remember that anatomy lab like it was all these cadavers, like 80 cadavers. You walk in the room and you could smell all the formaldehyde and that's when she started getting anxious, that's when she started breathing it in. Well, it was a formaldehyde. It was a formaldehyde. Exposure, a massive formaldehyde exposure. And, and as her year went on, grad school year went on, as she got further and further away from that, her anxiety went, got away. She felt better. Oh, yeah, her, the psychology. Oh, you're feeling better. Like you're less stressed now, you know, and she had straight A's in grad school. Like she literally had, you know, straight A's of first, like all the years in of her own graduate degree. So she's smart, smart, smart gal. But her issue, and it took me 15 years to figure it out, that, oh, all your stuff started with your anatomy lab from out. And the only reason he actually clicked with me because. Because I actually had been in the same space and knew that, you know, by the way, you know, one of the physicians in my practice, Dr. Junsky that we talked to on my podcast all the time, like he felt intuitively something was off in anatomy lab and just didn't go to anatomy lab. He would just show up for the tests. He's got photogenic memory, so he would just show up, get the A and walk out. But he's like, yeah, I didn't like that place. It made me feel like it just felt wrong. I felt I just didn't like it.

[B]

And I'm being in a nail salon and handling all that crap.

[C]

Yeah, it's just this horrible. So, like, it depends on the person, depends on the story, depends on the things that build up and also depends on can you figure those things out and unravel them. Which means you need to have a good relationship with your provider. You need to be engaged, but you also, it's up to the patient to be self aware to a certain degree to help tell the provider what they need to know so they can get them on a good, good course.

[B]

People surprised if, you know, if you figure out something happens to them 20 years ago and that's causing their problem all this time, you know what, typically

[C]

the response I get from people is like, oh, that makes sense. Like, really funny. I don't ever say, oh, all the concussions you had in playing college football is the reason why now you're having early onset Alzheimer's. Like, no one says no way. You know, they're like, oh, that makes sense. One young lady who developed some really bad metabolic issues and she went to spring break, had drank a lot of alcohol during spring break, but during spring break she got three concussions. Three concussions. And that resulted in her having horrible anxiety, body aches and pains. Weight gain messed her hormones up. And when I saw her for the first time when she was like early 20s. Like when I talked to her about it, she wasn't like no way. Like she was ready. She was like, oh, that makes sense. And it's funny how when you talk with people and you tell them, and you tell them their story back, like this is what happened, this is your story, this is how it started, this is your symptoms. Because that's what we do. It's a two hour intake and then the intake, I basically give people a summary of like what everything means to me. And it's really amazing how people are like oh, it all makes sense to me now. So I don't really typically get pushback.

[B]

Well that's good. Is there anyone you haven't been able to help even though they were compliant?

[C]

Everybody will respond to a certain degree. It depends on what degree is that. You know, if you're a 16, 17, 8 year old kid, kid with health issues, your ability to self heal and self repair is much better than someone in their 80s. So I'm working with a patient right now who has dementia and he's like 85. His dementia actually started after colon cancer surgery and chemotherapy that he had about 10 years ago. And he's been stable and like his wife is super happy because his brother got dementia and within three years he was dead. And her husband's 10 years into this and he's still functioning, he still goes out, does this, he's still like, he's still with it, he's still there. And so for him the win, the win is he's been stable for 10 years. The win isn't it went away and he's like, you know, jumping around like he's 20 again, you know. So I think it's depends on when you catch the person your age, your body's self ab, your ability to self heal and repair, you know, based on a lot of different factors. But as long as you're alive, your body is actually self healing and self repairing. If you get sick, you get a cut, you, whatever happens, your body heals itself that as long as you're alive, that potential is still there. The question is can you maximize it for you, whatever that means and what does it look like and so everybody can get better. The question just as how much and it's based on a bunch of different factors.

[B]

Understood. So what, what new protocols are changing functional medicine making it even better? Is it a microbiome focus or you know, are there? I mean it's not really a drug focus I would think but better testing, like what's happening in the functional world to make it more efficacious than ever.

[C]

There's all kinds of things. I mean, it's really funny that you've mentioned the microbiome world because the whole gut, leaky gut, microbiome world and the functional medicine world's like 20 to 30 years old. It's just recently come into, you know, conventional medicine, you know, for us, you know, microbiome and leaky gut, like that's, that's basic old. That's old news, right? Some of the newer stuff, which actually is, a lot of the newer things are just old things re understood. You know, lipid therapy is using specific fatty acids, phosphylcholine, butyrate, butyrate, tudka, ursodiol, certain types of bile acid extracts to actually help your cell walls and cell membranes heal themselves. You know, you might use one. One of, one of the thoughts currently is about how like all more cancer, more chronic disease, like more obesity. Part of that is we've been on this low fat, no fat kick for 50 years and we've wrecked havoc on the cell membranes of gener. One of the newer quote unquote things is realizing that you can actually fix that by doing a focused fatty acid analysis look for people with inflammatory fats and then basically either through oral IVs, fix their membranes and guess what? The bodies will actually start to self heal and self repair. And it sounds, it's really, it's really super high level stuff. There's new drugs and research coming on it, but yet it's basic biochemistry that I learned in medical school back in 1996. It's just realizing how the basic science actually fits into current premium paradigms. I was in medical school, I was told the first year, two years of medical school I could forget about because you never need other stuff. And functional medicine literally is relearning that because it all applies. And so, you know, there's, there's always something new. I mean, what you know. Actually another new thing I learned that I've been using since December is neural therapy. You might appreciate this. So neural therapy is this really cool therapy that allows me to reset your fascia, which are your connective tissue. And it's a way to reset your nervous system, your hormonal system, your trauma system, so you can help with pain syndromes, tmj, migraines. If you've had like a personal traumatic, traumatic issue that's put your nervous system in a trauma state, you can reset it with neural Therapy. So you're like, okay, okay, cool. Neural therapy, like never heard it before. I hadn't heard of it either until November of 2025. Here's the catcher. The term neural therapy was coined in 1925. It's been around for 100 years. They have 5,000 practitioners that do it in Germany and I'd never heard about it in America after three board certifications, 25 years of practice until literally this past. No, November. So there's, there's so many things out there. Like one of my newer things, quote unquote is there's so many things that have been around that these experts have figured out that are sequestered, that are not being advertised. There's so many of those things. I, I feel like every couple months I find something new that's been around forever and it's changed. Then they're, and they're game changers.

[B]

That's cool. It's interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of amazing stuff in the old, like I guess phage therapy, you know, that was the, the domain of the Russians supposedly for many years and years. Barely mentioned.

[C]

I mean, peptides. Peptide. Peptides is another one. Stem cells, exosomes, you know, peptides. Super useful, super helpful. Yeah. It' problem is the FDA has been very, been cracking down on, there's debates on why that is. Is it because they're not safe? I mean many peptides have been around for decades. You know, you can give them, you can give them supplements over the counter. You just can't get them as a drug, which is kind of, if it's someone safe, why are you allowing supplements to be made of this stuff? So one, one of the thoughts is that there's a, there's a bunch of medications coming out.

[B]

Don't tell them.

[C]

Yeah. And so yeah, so you just don't want to put these things out there. But peptides, I've been, I've had to be very successful, very helpful some of my more difficult patients because they're giving your body things that naturally needs to self heal and self repair. And if you're not sel healing and self repairing, then you have some healing issues. So you can use things like BPC157, you know, Thomas and Beta 4. And it actually helps you buy, heal better, quicker. That one, that combination has actually gotten a nickname, the Wolverine, you know, peptide stack because it actually helps your body heal much quicker than it usually does.

[B]

So do you, do you do like prp, stem cells, exosomes, that kind of stuff?

[C]

Prp. I don't personally do prp. I do exosomes of stem cells and I source it, um, from a clean place in, in Tennessee. But there, there's a lot of different types of stem cells and exosomes and stuff. PRP typically is, the orthopedic person is doing that. That requires a lot of fancy equipment to spin it down. You gotta pull the blood out and spin it down. Just. That's a little more technical now. That's typically, there's one, there's a couple people in town here in Richmond that are doing that and they're pain management orthopedic people. But I'm doing more stem cell exosome type stuff in that, in that arena

[B]

or what have you seen as like some of the most efficacious of stuff, you know, for fixing old wounds, aches and veins, things like that. Is it, you know, extracellular vesicles, exosomes, or is it more peptides or combination of the two?

[C]

You know, it depends. You know, I had, you gotta treat the patient. So I've got one guy who had significant heart failure and his ejection fraction was about 15 to 20%. Now typically you want like 50 or 60. And so he's got significant heart failure, he's got pacemaker and we did a combination of exosomes and stem cells with, with him and three months later his echo was, was 40%. So it's like almost normal.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

Peptides aren't going to do that. Personally, I was having some shoulder issues. I did exosomes and stem cells in my shoulder and it did get better. I got some rotator cuff issues. I used actually some growth hormones, some CJC and some thymosin beta 4 with BPC, which are different peptides. And that's. That worked great for my shoulder. And he came back again, you know, so, so I broke down, did some research, started doing my own physical therapy on it and some fascia work. And actually that's been the best. So sometimes the fancy stuff, you know, that was several thousand dollars of my own money on stem cells, exotherms, peptides, when basically I needed to do some basic physical therapy and get a fascial ball and roll my shoulder after two or three months and now it doesn't bother me anymore. So it's, you know, that's the thing about being a practitioner is actually not just reading articles about how stuff is supposed to work, but seeing how it actually works and then see how it actually works in hundreds of people. You get a feel for what is the most Likely outcome. And that's the difference between, like a researcher and a clinician. Researchers read articles and say, these are the things that might work. The clin. Do it and say these are the things that actually work for these patients.

[B]

But then everything clinical is bobbed off as anecdotal. Well, you know, like traditional, you know, medicine, which is ridiculous. Like, you know, think about it like Lipitor, right? So the clinical trial to make it, I don't know, let's say I'll be nice. I'll say there's probably 100 people, you know, in the meantime, I don't know, 50 million people have taken it. But no, that data is anecdotal. Don't, don't look at that data. You know, different races, ages, circumstances, all that. Imagine a libertarian gathered all that data. What would it tell them now? That the drug has been used millions and millions and millions and millions of times. But, you know, you'll never hear it. It's just kind of funny to me.

[C]

A lot of times when, like, when experts use the word anecdote, that's the way of blowing off something they don't understand, Right? Like the thing I tell people, I've got three board certifications. I practice medicine in seven countries and four and four continents. I've had over a hundred thousand patient encounters. And what you learn over all that clinical experience is when someone like these antidotes, anecdotes, I've stopped ignoring those and started just put those on. I don't understand what you said, Richard. That doesn't make sense to me. I'm going to put on the shelf up as many times, I'll come back a year, two or three later, I'll see something similar and I'll connect the dots and realize, oh, that wasn't. That was an anecdote. That was actually this physiology, this, this biology happening in that person. And now I understand the easiest thing to do is to blow it off and say, that's nothing. It's all in your head. It's an anecdote. It's not scientific. That's the right. That's the easy thing. That's the thing that takes no work, no effort. The hard thing is to go like, is there any data on that? Actually, has anybody ever done this? Let me go out and say, spend a couple weeks figuring it out. That's way harder than it is just to blow people off and say, I'm a scientist and that's anecdotal. That takes no intellectual endeavor at all to do. And that's unfortunately the normal normative thing to do is I never heard this before, therefore I'm a blowed off because it can't be that, because I'm the expert. I'm like, you know, I tell patients, as you know, I don't, after 25 now, 26 years and everything I just said, I, I'm still practicing, I'm still learning. Like you get to a certain point in your career, you have to be humble because if you're not, you're going to miss things and you're going to overlook things and you have to realize there's, there's, there's, I've forgotten more in my career at this stage than I'll learn in the rest of it. And so you have to realize there's so much out there and you just can't. You have to listen to people, you have to, their stories are real, they know their bodies better than any, any expert does. And you have to take that information, the, the patient's preference, their story, the medical literature, your expertise, and you put those all together and that is what evidence based medicine originally was defined as. We've kind of bastardized it and turned it only into this research article driven thing that's forgotten the original point of it, which was to listen to patients. Patients apply the literature and use your expertise. That's what a true clinician is, you know, scientific clinician is supposed to do.

[B]

Right. What do you think would happen if you took patient notes, you know, and redacted personal info, of course, and put it into an AI and asked it to draw conclusions from, you know, the hundred thousand patient encounters you've had, maybe for certain conditions, like subsets of data, et cetera. Do you think that would be useful or, you know, what would come of it?

[C]

AI is useful. I'd actually use it a fair amount in my practice just to help me with ideas and processing things. But the problem with AI is it's an idiot savant. And what that is, it's, it's, it's consumed supposedly the entirety. As of today. This is, you know, April 10th of 2026, as of today, supposedly it's consumed the entirety of human knowledge twice. But it can't interpret anything, it can't really understand stuff. So you might ask it a question and it'll actually literally lie to you sometimes. Right. And the other problem with the AI stuff is now it's actually, it's like it's starting to consume itself because AI has created enough information out there that now there's information out there that it's created and now it's consuming that data. So it's almost like the dragon, you know, the Chinese thing, the dragon that's eating its own tail. So, so it's really changed. And this is a new phenomena in the AI that's been popped up in the last six months. And so you, the person using the tool has to be smart enough to be able to interpret and process information, spit out to them and not take it to the gospel. This is what it is. They have to know enough to know. Okay, that makes sense. Ah, ah, I understand now if you, if it doesn't make sense, you don't accept it, right? I've had AI tell me, I've put some labs in there, ask IT to interpret them for me, but I actually read the labs first and it's like this, this, this, and like you got the wrong labs, you're looking at the wrong stuff. And it's like, oh, I'm so sorry, you're right. And you're like, okay, so AI is useful, it's helpful, but you have to know enough to be able to use it the right way.

[B]

So what do you think is going to be the future of functional medicine then the next five years or so?

[C]

You know what, I have no idea, man. That's, that's a, that's a crazy question because I don't know what's going to be going on a year from now. You know, if. Based on the current trajectory and trends, I see two divergent pathways. The first pathway is the insurance industry academic pathway that's going down this one thing. And then the other one is a patient driven, consumer driven pathway that some practitioners are already popping out on, meeting the needs of people as they demand them. And these are two different economic systems. They're two different, two different business strategies. One's based on working for insurance companies in the government and one's based on working for people. And so these two pathways are diverging. And unfortunately what's happening is people with money are getting more access to functional medicine and people without are stuck on the government system. If you're Medicaid aid patient, good luck finding a functional medicine person. You may not, you're not gonna be able to see someone unless you're willing to pay cash for it. And you probably don't have the resources.

[B]

And so there's two separate systems thinking about that.

[C]

Yeah, there's two separate systems. And so, and you have to be educated enough to understand, you know, what real food is and how to read a food package. And how to source your food and then you have to be, be successful enough to have the money to afford those things. And so, you know, there's a disparity in education and access and then just, you know, one part of the population is online all the time reading stuff. And one part, one part of the population accepts what the, what the teachers teach them, schools teaching them, what the news teaches them, what their specialists teach them. And they're only going to do what the experts, you know, say. And those people aren't going to do anything new or novel. And so, so we have these two pathways that are going and you know, how are they going to end up? I don't know. Yeah, my personal opinion, I feel like the government should just let, let the winners run. You know, the people that are doing this have set practices, just let them do it. Initially, when functional medicine started and when concierge practices started, some of the insurance companies started suing physicians because they didn't want competition. And so took about 10 years for that to settle out. And then direct primary care popped up as another economic model. And then the same kind of thing. You're practicing doctors are practicing, practicing insurance. You can't do that. So insurance companies went after them. And so now it's picked up in a lot of states. But some people are still a little scared because the legal risks and the financial risks. So it really depends on. What do you mean?

[B]

Like, like if you do functional medicine, you can't take insurance or is it even beyond that? They don't even want some functional medicine people do exist.

[C]

Well, you can't really practice functional medicine in a 10 minute time slot. You know, I mean my, My intake is 2 hours. My follow up is an hour and 15 minutes. Like how do you do that when insurance pays for 10 minutes of your time?

[B]

So that's true. Yeah.

[C]

So when I first started, I was like running an hour behind in clinic and I was like back in four weeks and I was, I was drowning and I could, I did it for, I did that while I come, while I was cutting my teeth. But that's not a way you can just not sustainable. And so the question is, how do you, you know, how does a physician who has, you know, a quarter of a million dollars dollars in college and medical school debt, who has a mortgage and car payments and kids in a family, I mean, how do they like actually pay their bills and practice medicine and functional medicine, that's where that, that economic model, everybody has to figure it out for themselves. And that's where I Think the difficulty. I think more people would do this if that was easier. You know, the thing I joke about people with is if. If I got paid with my podiatrist, got paid, got. You know, I went to the podiatrist, you know, 10 years ago for foot problem. It was like 15 minutes, and my insurance paid him 250 bucks. I mean, if my insurance paid me, insurance paid me that for my time, I would forget. I would just build insurance, you know, all day long, and then it wouldn't be a problem. But the reality is, is. Is that insurance doesn't recognize functional medicine. And so, you know, the way forward. I'm really interested to see what happens. I feel like more and more people are getting educated about it and learning about it. But to predict what's going, like, five years from now, I think I. I'm just trying to stay at the front end of everything, take care of my people, raise my kids, take care of my family, keep my business going, and then spread the news, educate people. You know, I guess that's my piece, I think, is educating parents, patients, educating people, and then taking care of my patients as best I can and navigating the system. And you have to. You have to be on your toes all the time because it's changing so much.

[B]

I understand, I understand. All right, well, what's the best way for people to get in touch? Like, where can you help people? Anywhere in the US or only certain states if they want to get in touch, how do they do it?

[C]

I mean, I've got my website, Aaron Hartman MD set up, and that's like my top of funnel. So if you go there, it talks about who I am, what I do. If you want to find my practice, which is rich man functional medicine, you can go to that website. From there, if you want to learn more about my. My podcast, you can go there. My YouTube channel, you can go there. The book as well. Incurable, which is my daughter's story. It'll take you there. So I use the Aaron Hartman MD as like, my launch point for all that stuff. But I. But I've got. I've got blogs, I've got website, I've got YouTube channel, I've got a podcast made for health, got a book. So I've got a lot of stuff, but, you know, that's too many. Too many links to tell people, too. So I say go to.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[C]

Go to Aaron Harmon MD and, you know, follow the bouncing ball.

[B]

Okay, Very good. Aaron. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it.

[C]

Richard Thanks a lot for if you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on itunes.

[A]

Thank you for listening to the Good Question podcast. Please email support at the good question podcast.com if you have any referrals to great guests for us to interview. Visit thegoodquestionpodcast.com to hear more interviews. And please help us spread the word by raising, rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to this podcast.